Byron Mundy shows support for Nichole Missino, owner of Giovanni's Barber Shop in Media, during a rally outside her shop earlier this month. Missino said she'd been threatened with the loss of her occupancy license if she reopened.

Protesters demonstrate during a rally against Pennsylvania's coronavirus stay-at-home order at the state Capitol in Harrisburg on May 15.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this March photo, Gov. Tom Wolf speaks at a news conference at Pennsylvania Emergency Management Headquarters in Harrisburg.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Protesters demonstrate during a rally against Pennsylvania's coronavirus stay-at-home order at the state Capitol in Harrisburg on May 15.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Byron Mundy shows support for Nichole Missino, owner of Giovanni's Barber Shop in Media, during a rally outside her shop earlier this month. Missino said she'd been threatened with the loss of her occupancy license if she reopened.

MEDIANEWS GROUP FILE PHOTO

Delaware County Council Chairman Brian Zidek has his temperature scanned before entering a press conference.

As Gov. Tom Wolf announced another 12 counties would move to a less restrictive “yellow” status by the end of the week, indicating a reduction in active COVID-19 cases, some in Delaware County are wondering when the same will happen here.

The state is reopening slowly under a three-tiered phased plan put in place by the governor. “Red” counties like Delaware County have seen stay-at-home orders issued by Wolf extended to at least June 4 and only “life-sustaining” businesses may remain open without a waiver from the state.

Businesses in “yellow” counties can perform some in-person services as long as “aggressive” mitigation efforts are still followed. There are no “green” counties yet, which lift nearly all restrictions on businesses that follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

- Advertisement -

“I think the governor needs to back off a little bit from the strict (idea) that he’s the only one who can decide when a county is going to go from red to yellow to green, and the county and legislators (should make that decision),” said state Rep. Steve Barrar, R-160 of Upper Chichester. “I’m talking to business owners every day and they’re saying, ‘Hey, we know how to open safe, let us do it.’”

Barrar said he receives probably 1,000 emails every few days from entrepreneurs and business owners expressing the same sentiment, along with innovative ideas to maintain social distancing and other curve-flattening measures that would allow shuttered businesses to begin selling their wares and services again.

“I think one of the things we need is clear data,” he said. “We need accurate data that we can count on and we’re not getting that from the administration. That’s the biggest complaint that I hear in the Legislature, that the data we get is continuously being disputed by different groups – like the number of deaths in nursing homes, how many people of different age groups have had coronavirus …The number we haven’t seen is the number of people that have recovered from coronavirus, so there’s a lot of data that’s missing.”

“There has been zero transparency,” said state Sen. Tom Killion, R-9 of Middletown. “And he’s been a very transparent governor throughout his terms, his six years, except for this.”

Killion noted there is still no information about how the state Department of Community and Economic Development handled waivers for some “non-life-sustaining” businesses to remain open, a process that has been criticized as uneven and unfair.

“I’ve got people crying on the phone and they’re about to lose everything,” said Killion. “If you would tell me why they can’t go back to work, or why a garden center or something is any different than what is allowed to be open now, then I would get it. But we’re not getting anything. No one is telling me why it’s different.”

“It's been extremely difficult for many residents and downright devastating for others,” said county Council Chairman Brian Zidek. “Many have lost loved ones and friends to COVID-19. Business owners struggle to pay their bills and keep their businesses open. Residents worry about their jobs and how they will make ends meet and all of us have had our lives turned upside down.”

Zidek, a Democrat, said council has been advocating for the governor, also a Democrat, to use different metrics that separately measure progress in long-term care facilities and in the broader community to assess whether Delaware County can begin to lift restrictions safely. But he urged businesses not to jump the gun by reopening early, which could come with severe consequences from the state.

“We are in a crisis right now, fighting this virus and all that comes with it, and trying to stop it from claiming even more lives and overwhelming our health care systems,” he said. “We hear your pleas and we understand your frustrations. The governor stated that there will be consequences to opening early and illegally including the loss of CARES Act and other relief funding through the state, the revocation of business licenses and the loss of insurance coverage for businesses failing to operate in accordance with the law."

State Sen. Tim Kearney, D-26 of Swarthmore, agreed with what he called Wolf’s “deliberative and cautious” approach to partially reopening parts of the state, but said he does not believe Delaware County is there yet.

“Just because we use different metrics doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to open right away,” he said. “The fact remains that there are two different communities involved here – the people who are at risk who live there (in nursing facilities) and then there’s the people who are at risk who take care of them.”

Until the amount of testing needed and amount of contact tracing is in place to handle that second group, he said, the county is simply not ready to move to yellow.

Kearney added that there is still much that is unknown about COVID-19, including its effects on children and seemingly healthy people. He noted a neighbor who runs every day and is in good shape ended up on a ventilator for 12 days after contracting the virus.

“I think we have to trust the advice that we’re getting from our public health officials,” he said. “I know there’s frustrations all around and everybody is sick and tired of not being out there, but if we prematurely go in and open things up it will just make it worse for us, I truly believe that.”

Killion agreed with Barrar that nursing home numbers should not be included in county data as a metric for moving into “yellow” status. He has already pushed Wolf to upgrade Chester County and redirect state resources to long-term care facilities to ensure the health and safety of elderly residents who have proven to be the most vulnerable population for coronavirus infection and death.

As of Friday, there had been 60,622 cases statewide and 4,342 deaths, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Delaware County accounts for 5,409 cases and 466 deaths. Nursing and personal care homes make up 12,937 resident cases and 2,039 employee cases at 550 facilities statewide. Out of total deaths, 2,991 have been attributed to residents from nursing or personal care facilities.

There were 39 facilities in Delaware County with a total 1,510 cases among residents reported as of Friday. There are also 273 cases among employees and 378 deaths associated with those figures.

The governor has provided guidance for moving from “red” to yellow,” including hitting a target of 50 or fewer new cases per 100,000 people over a 14-day period. County Councilman Kevin Madden said that would be roughly an average of 20 new cases per day for Delaware County.

But state Rep. Leanne Krueger, D-161 of Nether Providence, said the county is still a long way off from that metric alone, even if it were to remove nursing homes and other congregate care facilities from the numbers, which only make up about a quarter of cases in Delco.

Krueger said state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine has indicated more information would be made about numbers at individual nursing homes, but said those facilities do not exist in a vacuum.

“They have employees that go in and out, they take public transportation, they need child care for their children, they’re often not paid a living wage for the work that they’re doing,” she said. “Some direct support professionals are working two or three jobs right now to support their families.”

In discussions with the state, Killion said he was informed that even if the county does hit the new case metric, that does not automatically mean it will go to yellow because it is still lumped into the region, including Montgomery and Philadelphia counties.

But Krueger provided demographic information Friday showing Delco had an average of 286 new daily cases over the two-week period ended May 12 – higher than any other county in the region. She added that the numbers of positive cases are likely below actual numbers simply for a lack of testing ability.

“Our numbers continue to go up at a time when other counties are going down,” said Krueger. “We need to fight for everything we need to move to yellow, but if we go too fast, our hospital facilities and first responders won’t have the capacity to respond to the surge in new cases.”

While she agreed that denser southeastern counties should be evaluated on a different set of metrics than rural counties, Krueger said every decision to move from red to yellow has to be done in conjunction with public health officials.

Zidek said Delaware County Council is doing all it can to move the county into a yellow phase, although that determination is made by the governor based on a variety of health statistics. He said council has been advocating for more diagnostic testing, which will enable the county to contain any future spread of the virus once restrictions are lifted, and asked the governor to reexamine the metrics previously set to gauge reopening and adjust them with the unique demographics and the resulting statistics in southeastern Pennsylvania, including the opportunity to reopen some types of businesses using safety measures.

"Let's be clear: COVID-19 remains widespread in Delaware County," he said. "We see the rest of Pennsylvania moving to yellow when we want to follow. We see folks in other parts of the country opening their businesses and we want to follow. That's understandable … Please know we are doing everything within our means to bring our county to a yellow phase in a manner that is safe. We also do not want to see our local businesses lose funding or lose their licenses by opening early, which some are advocating they do."

Killion pointed to statements from Dr. Donald Yealy, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Dr. Steven Shapiro, UPMC’s chief medical and scientific officer, who testified before the Pennsylvania Senate Aging & Youth and Local Government Committees on May 13.

Yealy noted that the idea of mitigation efforts like hand washing, social distancing and mask wearing was never to stop the spread of the virus, but rather to “flatten the curve” by rapidly decreasing its growth and preventing hospitals, emergency departments and intensive care units from becoming overwhelmed.

Those efforts have paid dividends, said Yealy, and there are now fewer new detected infections, fewer people hospitalized and fewer people dying. He added that it is now clear that those most at risk are the elderly and those with underlying health issues, which should be the main focus now.

Shapiro likewise said seniors must be protected, but argued against continued “social isolation,” which he said could lead to serious mental health issues even before the greater consequences of economic devastation sink in.

“One thing is certain: Pandemics will be part of our future, and we must be better prepared,” he said. “We can’t be put in a position to have to choose between death by pathogen or death by economic shutdown.”

But Zidek pointed out that the death rate associated with COVID-19 is still very real and still very much a concern.

"Last year through May 12, there was a total of 502 deaths in the county," he said. "This year, through May 12, there was a total of 1,062 deaths in the county. So the number of lives lost in our county has more than doubled year-to-date over the last year. To deny that COVID-19 is responsible is to defy logic.”